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So, the biggest complaint about Instant-runoff voting seems to be that it can lead to a counter-intuitive scenario, where a candidate becomes more popular, but
by Yen 10y ago
So, the biggest complaint about Instant-runoff voting seems to be that it can lead to a counter-intuitive scenario, where a candidate becomes more popular, but loses the election.
From what I've seen of constructed scenarios that have this situation, they have 'left', 'compromise', and 'right' candidates, with the majority of voters tending to prefer left>compromise>right, or right>compromise>left.
If 'compromise' is the weakest candidate, either left or right ends up winning. But if left or right become popular enough, and make left/right the weakest candidate, than compromise wins out over both extremes.
Frankly, this actually doesn't seem like that much of a problem to me. If we end up with everyone's second-favorite choice, everyone is at least second-most happy.
For example, in the USA - Without commenting on Gary Johnson's politics or experience, I think the USA would have been happier had he been chosen. Half the population is pulling their hair out over Trump. Had Clinton won, the other half would likely feel the same way. Most of the population would be less-excited to see Johnson in office than their preferred candidate, but relieved that at least opposing candidate didn't get in.
- bigger_cheese 10y ago>So, the biggest complaint about Instant-runoff voting seems to be that it can lead to a counter-intuitive scenario, where a candidate becomes more popular, but loses the election. This sentence doesn't make sense the original article failed to mention if you poll 50% of the first preference vote you get elected. So if you are at least 50% "popular" you can't lose. If you poll below 50% it comes down to preferences as it rightly should in my opinion. there is nothing counter intuitive about this. It happens here (in Australia) quite often. http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2016/guide/mpor/ http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2016/guide/mpor/ Here the Right (Liberal party) candidate polled 40% and lost because the two Left parties (Labor + Greens) also polled about 40% combined.
- anonymoushn 10y agoIs it good that sometimes voting A > B > C would cause A to lose, while voting C > B > A would cause A to win?
- im3w1l 10y agoDoes this actually happen in practice? What would it take to trigger this behavior?
- anonymoushn 10y agoYes, here's an account of a real election http://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html http://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html. The relevant bit: > If 753 of the W-voters (specifically, all 495 of the W>K>M voters plus 258 of the 1289 W-only voters) had instead decided to vote for K, then W would have been eliminated (not M) and then M would have beaten K in the final IRV round by 4067 to 3755. In other words, Kiss won, but if 753 Wright-voters had switched their vote to Kiss, that would have made Kiss lose!
- brianolson 10y agothis actually happened in Burlington VT in 2009; then they repealed IRV http://bolson.org/~bolson/2009/20090303_burlington_vt_mayor.html http://bolson.org/~bolson/2009/20090303_burlington_vt_mayor....